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Notes -
Conservatism is not an ideology. It's an orientation. Moreover, it's an orientation against a reference point, (which is why today's conservative is yesterday's liberal etc.)
People confuse this because contrast the term with liberalism, which can mean two things.
Most of the useless polticial showerthoughting is downstream of the confusion caused by the fact that the word liberal can refer to either, which conservative can't.
Both the complaints of liberals not being liberal, or conservatives not being ideological, or of assuming conservatives are ideologically illiberal etc.
At the end of the day, both American Conservativism and Liberalism are big tents each containing both liberals and illiberals.
One thing I love about the 1991 August Coup in the Soviet Union is that it’s about the only time and place in history where you could be a Conservative Communist.
Most of what makes modern politics/political actors difficult to understand these days is not understanding that classical liberalism is [now] a "conservative" position, and taking what groups call themselves at face value rather than thinking about it for 5 seconds and figuring out that yes, actually, progressives are the most conservative movement today (in the "develop nothing ever, be safety-obsessed all the time, impose nonsensical social controls out the ass, sanction sex, hate the young, old women > young men" senses that popularly characterize conservatism).
Not that we haven't tried- "right is the new left" was nearly 10 years ago now (and people still just don't get it)- but ultimately the failure to understand who and what the groups are (and the groups themselves don't help either, to be fair, and this is mostly an advantage to progressives/the media's faction) will destroy anyone's ability to think logically about politics.
Haidt's 6 Foundations apply just as well (or even more) to the average progressive than they do to the average traditionalist, but as soon as you say the C-word, people start thinking they only apply to Boomercons and they shut right down.
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